1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of data transmission and, more specifically, to a consolidated crossbar that supports a multitude of traffic types.
2. Description of the Related Art
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized processor that is configured to efficiently process complex graphics and other numerical computations. Each GPU has several on-chip hardware components, such as memory caches and logic operations units, configured to efficiently perform the graphics and numerical computations.
In a typical GPU, hardware components communicate with one another over dedicated channels. For example, the texture units within the GPU communicate with the memory controller via a dedicated channel, and raster operations units communicate with the memory controller via a different dedicated channel. Each of these dedicated channels is designed to service the peak bandwidth requirements of the particular hardware component.
One drawback to a GPU architecture having dedicated channels between the different hardware components is that often times only one of the channels is active, while the others remain idle, thus wasting available bandwidth. Another drawback to such a GPU architecture is that a large area of die-space is needed to implement the dedicated channels, thus increasing production costs and reducing efficiency.
As the foregoing illustrates, what is needed in the art is a GPU architecture where different on-chip hardware components communicate over non-dedicated channels.